Roku TV device owners are threatening to throw them in the trash if the company’s latest experiment becomes a permanent ‘feature’.
Online forums such as Reddit are full of complaints from disgruntled Roku customers who have made it quite clear they don’t appreciate the latest intrusion, which involves showing a full-screen, auto-playing and unskippable ad the moment the device is switched on, before the home screen appears.
One poster on r/Roku commented that: “I just turned on my Roku and got an unskippable ad for a movie before I got to the regular Roku homescreen”. In the following thread, multiple other Roku device owners reported seeing the ads, too.
The ad was for a new movie called Moana 2, which has just launched on Disney+ and can only be accessed by subscribers to that service. Annoyingly, though, the ad is still being shown even to non-subscribers.
Roku told Ars Technica in a statement that the auto-playing ads are an “experiment” as it continues to innovate “across design, navigation, content and our first-rate advertising products”.
The fact it’s still an experiment means there’s no guarantee Roku will make the ads a permanent element of the Roku OS experience, but the odds are surely in favour of that happening.
Roku insisted that, by forcing users to watch an ad that cannot be skipped before they can access their TV, it’s “providing a delightful and simple user experience.”
Not surprisingly, many Roku device owners disagree with that assessment of its latest invasive gesture, and some have even indicated that the company may have finally gone too far. Roku is already one of the most ad-heavy TV operating systems around, and it has publicly and repeatedly expressed a desire to grow its advertising revenues further.
It’s worth pointing out that Roku isn’t the only TV operating system maker that’s gone down this route. Most of its competitors, including Amazon and Google, have stepped up their advertising spree. For many companies, they feel it’s necessary to bombard consumers with ads because most TVs and streaming sticks barely make a profit these days. As such, manufacturers are looking to monetise their users by showing them ads, instead.
However, Roku has notably been much more aggressive than many of its rivals, plastering banner ads over live TV and video ads on its home screen. With its latest full-screen ads, it has reached a point that many feel that it’s seriously impacting the overall quality of their TV experience.
"The persistent ad banners were bad enough, but automatically playing ads is unacceptable," one Roku owner posted on Reddit.
"Just turned on my TV to see a video open on the home screen and play some trailer? I hope this was a fluke. I trashed all of my Amazon boxes years ago because of this garbage. If it keeps up, my Rokus will be next," another upset user wrote on Roku's community forum.
